


Lick the Spark

by monanotlisa



Category: Fringe, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Character of Color, Crossover, F/M, Female Character of Color, Gen, Horror, Origins, POV Female Character, Pre-Canon, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-20
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ever wondered why Junior Agent Astrid Farnsworth hasn't been much fazed by the fantastic from the get-go?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lick the Spark

**Author's Note:**

> No knowledge of the new _Teen Wolf_ show is required, and also, I'm playing fast and loose with the time-lines: Few things on TW2011 prohibit it being set a few years in the past, and of course _Fringe_ makes a bit more sense if it's set in a slight future (where Obama got his second term, of course). Title snagged from _Bloodbeat_. No remorse.

  
The woods are lovely, dark and -- mostly, really, they're dark.

Astrid pushes at the slider on her flashlight without much success, squinting at the words and numbers on the page page. Dusk has come and gone, and the _6_ s are almost indistinguishable from the _8_ s, the _i_ s from the _l_ s, which won't do. She breathes a sigh and looks up, lets her eyes focus on distance again.

The fallen tree she's found perfect to sit and read on is mere minutes from the lodge, nestled into bushes on the ridge overlooking Beacon Hills. Much as her father complained about the ultimate remoteness of their accommodation and her mother remarked upon this being the whitest place in even Northern California, the All Seasons Travel brochure contained no false advertising regarding the elevation levels of their holiday location: Below her, down the soft slope, the forest stretches on and on until, faraway, she can see the lights of the town.

Actually, she can hear something too -- not just small woodland animals and _urgh_ , the papery flutter of the big grey moths circling the light of her torch; no, there's something else. Something that's breaking twigs and rustling dry leaves, much larger and coming closer with every -- jump, stride, step? Astrid's on her feet in one rapid heartbeat, a part of her wanting to run back to the cabin, but the other part thinks, _a mystery not on a page of paper or in number patterns_ , and besides, her parents did check; the rangers are controlling the bears and mountain lions in this part of California...although of course there are predators of a different species everywhere, as her parents have been telling her.

But none of them, animal or human, would be so stupidly loud stumbling around the woods at night, right? She swallows, puts her bookmark in _Mathematical Cryptology_ and the book down very gently on the log, then aims her flashlight -- weak, too weak -- down the hill, in the general direction of the sounds. "Who's there?" she yells, which probably isn't as smart as it could be, as she usually is. Also her voice sounds thin and frightened, which makes her frown.

Whatever it is, it's still coming through the trees, up the hill. Astrid blinks, looks around for a -- a stick, a stone, something to defend herself because didn't all the written instructions say _you mustn't run if a bear is after you, and you must stand your ground with a cougar too because then they can't classify you as their prey, which humans generally aren't, so it's silly and irrational to be so afraid, and --_

"Uh, hi?"

Astrid almost drops the torch; her palms are strangely slippery. But she manages to speak up and hold it steady. "Stop, wait!"

A shuffle just outside the radius of her dying light. "That -- that would mean you can't really see who I am. Answering your first question, I mean. That you hollered out a minute ago." Young voice; it's a boy, just a boy. Astrid exhales. He sounds a little husky, as if he had a throat infection, but it's still someone around her age, a little younger, maybe.

"Okay," she says, firmer now, "step forward, but slowly?"

He does, a boy of maybe sixteen, slender and dark-eyed. Pretty, she thinks, _hot_ even, maybe, and there's a tug low in her belly. But strong too: athletically built, all muscle and no no fat. She can tell so easily because he's not wearing a shirt, only --

"Are those pajama pants?"

The boy blinks rapidly and looks down at himself, at his _naked feet_ , and oh, this -- coupled with the confusion on his face and the light sheen of sweat on his body -- is beginning to make sense. "You must be a somnambulist!"

"Somna--" His forehead creases; it's quite cute. "You mean, you think I'm a sleepwalker." The expression on his face is almost grateful. Then he bites his lips and squares his jaw, looking at her over the beam of the flashlight. "What are _you_ doing here, though? I thought this part of the forest --" he coughs, looks away.

Which is interesting because Astrid wasn't aware of sleepwalkers mapping their exact path before going to sleep. Also, it's a little early for him have gone to bed, made it all the way into NREM sleep, not to mention here, all the way up on the hillside. Her earlier apprehension is coming back full-force, because really, he seems perfectly sweet, but also nervous, his eyes darting around when he asks her, "Are you alone?"

Astrid so should have grabbed the stick when she had the chance. Now she can only look especially fierce and tell him, "No, my parents are in the lodge just behind us -- probably out on the sun porch. Which is more of a moon porch right now, but my mother likes to sip her Syrah in peace and quiet late at night, so..."

His lips quirk into a bit of a smile at that, but mostly he looks worried. Not for himself, she thinks, the uneasiness in her stomach growing. Maybe he's been chased here by somebody else? Maybe he's the disgraced member of a gang? But that's a city thought; Beacon Hills has no gangs, not even any measured crime; she researched some basic demographics before coming here, of course.

He's sweating more strongly now, strangely enough, big glistening droplets on his chest. It's hard to tear her eyes away from the swiftly shifting muscles of his chest, his slim hips where those ragged pajamas pants have slipped down a little. No longer running at high speed through the trees but clearly agitated. He's also pale, too pale for his complexion. Is he sick? Feverish? The boy's also pressing his mouth together, as if in pain. Astrid would like to take a step -- or ten -- back, only there's the log, and it's pretty clear he can outrun her anyway. He doesn't sound or seem dangerous, and if he were he probably would have attacked her already, but his behaviour makes no sense except if something, someone here is.

"Listen," she says, softly as not to spook him, "if there's any way I can help you --"

"Yes you can," he says immediately, a little desperate, or at least hopeful. "You're tourists; you must have maps of this place. Maybe I can go somewhere here, somewhere safe?"

Astrid opens her mouth to suggest leading him over the ridge, to her parents' vacation home, finding him shoes and a shirt, or to suggest he just go home again, but when she sees the expression in his eyes, she knows that's not what he means: he wants to be somewhere away from people, yet sheltered in the night.

"I do have a map." She's Astrid Jasmine Farnsworth; she's yet to find a problem she cannot solve. "Maybe there's a hunting lodge nearby, a shack or something?" She doesn't wait for his answer; without taking her eyes off him, she rummages in the left-side, larger pocket of her sweater and pulls it out.

The flashlight is even weaker now, but when she holds out the only slightly dented paper map between them, he immediately points at it, at tiniest grey lines and dots. "This is Hunting Lodge Homes, which I assume is where your family is, and where we are."

"Yes." She glances up from the map at him, his bent head and the shock of black hair that looks shaggy but is probably soft to the touch. Unlike hers; she runs the fingers of her right hand through her braids before she remembers, pulls back. Focuses on the map again. "Slightly to the East, there's a -- what's this, a ranger's waystation?"

"Yeah, there's a fire path." Okay, she'll trust his better eyesight there. "Must be non-manned, though, or I'd know about it; my best friend -- anyway. I could probably get there on my own, need to go there right now." It's what he says; it's not what he feels because his eyes are pleading, and Astrid wasn't quite right about their earlier colour. Must have been the biological shortcomings of human night vision, because now, so close, his eyes look not dark brown as she'd originally thought but almost amber. He stares at her too, and not in worry for once, gaze dropping down to her mouth, his own tongue coming out to wet his lips.

The flutter inside her is definitely not moths but all butterflies, all the time. "I'll come with you!"

They both look a little shocked after that, Astrid thinks, but he doesn't argue with her. "Actually, that -- there's one thing that you could do; it'd be really important." She believes him; anyone looking at him would buy it.

The _one thing_ turns out to be the door of the shack: locking it. Behind him, with him inside. The skin on the back of Astrid's neck is prickling when he asks her to do it. He has balled his hands into fists, is hiding them behind his back, but the hair on his arms is almost like a curved arrow. When the flickering beam from the flashlight hits his eyes, they're almost golden. Astrid has always been what her parent called "a serious child", but she knows science, and this -- this must be an aspect of it.

"Get in, then" she says, and she almost doesn't recognise her own voice. It sounds small, but it also sounds determined: she can do this; she can help this strange boy.

"What's your name?" he rasps, head bent low again, long dark lashes fanning over his cheeks and obscuring his eyes. She tells him, and he smiles a close-mouthed smile...but when he says, "Thanks, Astrid," she can see teeth flashing for just a millisecond. And then he's gone, into the hut, into complete darkness. The full moon above her is brighter than the flashlight by now, and she turns it off.

"Lock it!" A growl from inside, and she half-thinks she can see him, moving in the shadows. Moving as a shadow.

Astrid slams the wooden door shut: solid, broad; it could keep any human inside. She's sweating -- not _glowing_ , oh, definitely not just glowing -- harder than he did earlier, and she needs to make sure the door remains shut, from the outside, and there it is, that stick she longed for much earlier, what feels like hours ago: she picks it up from the ground a few feet away and jams it into the framework, a make-shift lock bar. Just in time too; there's a howl from inside the hut now, and a hard _thwack_ when something heavy...when the boy throws himself against the door from the inside.

It holds. It may hold longer too, but the flashlight is slipping from her fingers, landing somewhere in the debris. Astrid has the foresight to hold up the map again in that pale moonlight to orient herself, but that's the last smart thing she does because afterward, Astrid simply runs. Runs like the boy much earlier, and probably as graceful; she stumbles once or twice but doesn't fall.

Her parents are still up and not worried at all, which only changes when they see their daughter, dirty and dishevelled, and they do exactly as she says by closing all doors and windows: making sure no wild animal can come in. A bear, she tells them, a big one. Or maybe a mountain lion.

They don't ask about any other dangerous creatures, not that night and not the next day when they leave the cabin for a change of plans and a hotel in Monterey Bay. But Astrid follows the news and newspapers and hacks into the network of the Beacon Hills PD in less than an hour once she's back home in Birmingham at her computer. She's not at all -- okay, fine: not that surprised when she reads the report of the vandalism in Waystation Five, all torn up on the inside. Where they, just outside the broken-through door, found wolf footprints in the mud and a child's flashlight too, chewed up by canine teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> It's true I only riffed this off a prompt on the [](http://fringe-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fringe_kinkmeme**](http://fringe-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/)...but I also think of this as a fragment of Astrid's Origin Story(tm) now.


End file.
